What Businesses Fear Most About Employees

Employees, Viruses and Malware

Of those companies that experienced virus and malware incidents, 53% said careless and uninformed employees were the top contributing factors. 36% think phishing and social engineering contributed to the attack.

Employees and Targeted Attacks

27% of the businesses surveyed were victims of targeted attacks—a 6% rise since last year. Of these, 28% believe phishing and social engineering contributed to the attack.

Employee Actions and Data Leaks

46% of respondents confirmed that security incidents resulted in their business' data being leaked or exposed because of employee actions.

Types of Information Lost

28% of respondents have lost highly sensitive or confidential customer and employee information because of irresponsible workers, and 25% have lost payment information.

Concerns About BYOD Persist

33% of businesses worldwide are still concerned about BYOD, and 48% worry about employees inappropriately sharing company data via mobile devices.

Weak Policies

An IT security policy is not enough because 44% of employees don't follow it, and only 26% of companies enforce it.

Recommendations

Train all employees to pay attention to cyber-threats and countermeasures.
Install security updates to ensure anti-malware protection is on.
Have workers make it a priority to manage their personal passwords.

Workers are hiding cyber-security incidents from their employers, according to a new study, thereby increasing overall damage. The consequences can be dire. Just one unreported incident may indicate a much larger breach, and security teams must be able to quickly identify threats in order to choose the right mitigation tactics. The report, "The Human Factor In IT Security: How Employees Are Making Businesses Vulnerable From Within," was conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International. "If employees are hiding incidents, there must be a reason why," said Slava Borilin, security education program manager at Kaspersky Lab. "In some cases, companies introduce strict but unclear policies and put too much pressure on staff, warning them not to do this or that, or they will be held responsible if something goes wrong. Such policies foster fears and leave employees with only one option—to avoid punishment, whatever it takes." He recommends a positive cyber-security culture based on an educational rather than a restrictive approach from the top down. 5,000 businesses worldwide participated in the study.

Karen A. Frenkel writes about technology and innovation and lives in New York City.